Excerpt from The Moral Sentiment of the People, the Index and Foundation of National Greatness: An Address by Edgar A. Bancroft on the Occasion of the Dedication of the Soldiers' Memorial Hall of Knox County, Ill The attack on Fort Sumter touched the moral sense of the North, and fired their hearts with patriotic love. How enthusiastic the response to the Nation's call for defenders! With no military ex perience, with no desire to share in the spoils of conquest or wear the Iaurels of war, the farmer left his plow in the clear ing, the merchant his store, the mechanic his bench and forge, the student his books, the professional man his honors, all equally careless of their personal fort unes, - that they might be enrolled as comrades in the cause that was greater than they - greater than all. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.